Friday, February 21, 2014

Google Fiber Considering Deployment in San Jose!

Google has just announced several new cities that are candidates for Fiber internet deployment, and guess what... San Jose is on the list! While Comcast and AT&T Uverse internet speeds average 15-30 Mbps, Google Fiber can hit a staggering 1,000 Mbps with future plans to go up to 10,000 Mbps. The difference is night and day. Imagine no load times for any page on the web and the ability to stream 4K (Ultra HD) video to every room in your house simultaneously. The best part is that all this performance does not come at a premium. Google's prices are competitive with what we pay today for average speeds.

Internet is becoming an absolute infrastructure necessity like electricity, water, and a sever system. As far as internet providers go, Google Fiber is the best option in the US. If we can bring this to San Jose, then it will be a huge competitive advantage over other cities--both for companies wanting to locate here and residents wanting to live here. Hopefully the city council will do whatever it takes to make this a reality. How can you help? Email you Councilmember and let them know we need this!

Fiber optic wires were laid to thousands of homes across San Jose in the mid-1990s by PacBell. But SBC shortsightly sold the networks for ATT at half-cost, which then sold to ComCast (as reported by ATT service reps). Its time for eminent domain, light up the fiber in public interest, and pay ComCast for its cost. That could give a kick start to bring fiber to San Jose. Why did new trenches in the streets, when the fiber is also resident!

After Google started deploying fiber in Austin, AT&T "coincidentally" deployed gigabit service as well... hmmmm. They claim it was not related, I have to call BS on that. Competition is almost always a good thing.